the Link Between Personality Types and Writing

In George H. Jenson and John K. DiTiberio's article titled, “Personality and Individual Writing Process” they compare someones personality to that of their writing process. Through this examination, Jenson and DiTiberio, come to realize that while teaching the writing process, teachers, professors or whom ever is instructing this process should take into consideration the individuals personality types. Determining the students personality can help prevent things like writers block when it comes to writing a paper or article. Once the individuals personality type is determined then steps can be made to individualize writing instruction.

Many ideas on how to identify different learning styles have already been introduced in classrooms. One being Jung's Theory of Psychological Types. C. G. Jung's system humanistically appreciates differences in personality and make it easy for teachers without a psychology background to understand. In Jung's presentation of Psychological Types that Isabel Myers later refined researchers find promise to for the improvement of instruction and research for the composition field.

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Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) has also been useful to different areas of research and can easily be used to help the research in composition. Teachers must receive training before administering the MBTI, but the information it holds can greatly help them in the way they teach (Jenson and DiTiberio, pg 286).

According to Jung, personality consists of four bi-polar dimensions. These being: Introversion vs. Extroversion, Sensing vs. Intuition, Thinking vs. Feeling, and Judging vs. Perceiving. Introversion vs. Extroversion is based off how we focus our energy. Extroverts tend to focus their energy on interacting with people and things where as introverts tend to focus their energy inward through consideration and contemplation.

Sensing vs. Intuition is based off how we perceive things. Sensing uses the process of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, or tough to record their environment where as Intuition involves using impressions, hunches, and imagination to record their environment. Thinking vs. Feeling is how we make decisions.

Thinking types tend to do what is right no better if feeling get hurt, where as Feeling types tend to make decisions off their personal values and the values of others. Judging vs. Perceiving is how we approach tasks within the world. Judging types tend to structure their world into things they can complete, where as Perceiving types tend to leave their world unstructured and leave tasks unfinished so they can better understand the world around them. At birth every individual is born with all these types but while we develop, humans lean more toward one than the other. There for, creating our individual personality types (Jenson and DiTiberio, pg 286, 290-295).

Myers calls the psychological process in the bi-polar scale that we prefer most as the preferred and the other the unpreferred process. According to her, to develop healthy personalities we must use our preferences progressively and more expertly, but not rigidly or exclusively. She stated that it is important to develop our unpreferred psychological process as a supplement. I could not agree more. I agree that if we put our comfort and our discomfort both to work that it can help us develop stronger personalities. In a perception analogous done by Jenson and DiTiberio, they observed that people do better, and with less anxiety when they employ their preferred process in early stages of the writing process and then use their unpreferred process in later stages to round out their ideas (Jenson and DiTiberio, pg 287).

When people overuse one process to the neglect of its opposite, or if they fail to use the strengths of the preference, they tend to get anxious or overtly blocked. If teachers use one set way to write then those students will in turn write the the teacher does. This causing more harm than good (Jenson and DiTiberio, pg 287). I believe that teachers who take this MBTI into consideration can better access the appropriate way to teach the students to their advantage instead of teaching the easier way just for the benefit of the teachers.

To better understand George H. Jenson and John K. DiTiberio's article I took the Jung Typology Test (http://www.humanmetrics.com). This test is much like the MBTI except it is free and available online. It is a test based off seventy-two yes or no answers. This is then wondered if this test is really that accurate because some of these questions people may have never come to contact with or they may not be able to supply a yes or no answer too. My results were ISFJ, which stands for Introverted, Sensing, Felling, and Judging.

According to D. Keirsey, from the website, I am named a Protector. I care strongly for family, I'm not openly social, I do everything to make other people happy, I tend to get walked on a lot, I am determined and I usually like to get things done alone. I'm not the best in leadership positions, whereas I am not great in front of a lot people and I generally work jobs that not most people would. On the website it also listed some careers that I would be best in based off my results. Some careers it said I would do best in would be teaching, managing a day care, social work, being a secretary, and nursing (http://www.humanmetrics.com).

With the results I got from the Jung Typology Test I then went to analyzing my own writing techniques. I am the kind of writer that does everything by rules. I make sure my structure fits what the teacher does and I try to do my exact best. I am a people pleaser. I tend to be a little afraid and unsure of going out of the box to get things accomplished. I focus so much on how I should be following all the rules that I tend to get writers block often. After reading this article by George H. Jenson and John K. DiTiberio I now understand some things that have been causing my writers block. After taking English 101 I feel like my writing has got a lot better but after this article I intend on perfecting it even more to eventually improve and rid myself of my current problem with writers block (http://www.humanmetrics.com).

My fiance Chris on the other hand had almost the complete opposite results as I did. His results were ENTJ. Which is Extroverted, Intuition, Thinking and Judging. He does not usually get writers block because he says he can,”backdoor the problem” and find other ways to complete his tasks. He enjoys being the center of attention and he has very little sympathy with it comes to expression his opinion and getting his way. I believe he would be helpful in me using my unpreferable psychological processes. This being, he would initially help me with my writers block through my use of the writing process (http://www.humanmetrics.com).

So all in all, I believe the beliefs and practices of Jung's Psychological Types would better help teachers to reach out to all their children by teaching different ways of writing. Through reading Jung's Psychological Types and George H. Jenson and John K. DiTiberio's article, “Personality and Individual Writing Process” teachers can get a broader knowledge of how their students personality can effect the way the interpret the writing process of with the teacher is teaching. I believe that this in turn would create less anxious, more improved writing and a more relaxing atmosphere to all students when it comes to working with the writing process.